Doncaster Rovers’ manager admitted Carlisle United could easily have thrashed his team by a bigger margin.

Gary McSheffrey said his side were “outran” by Paul Simpson’s high-octane Blues in their 3-0 defeat.

The visiting boss faced chants for his removal by disgruntled travelling fans at Brunton Park.

And McSheffrey accepted that Carlisle got the better of his side in some key departments.

“We had a big chance at 0-0 that could have changed things, but in saying that Johnny [Mitchell] has made two or three great saves, and a penalty late on, so it could have been worse,” he told the BBC.

“The second half was nowhere near to the level. We’re conceding goals from our attacks – it was a concern we weren’t ready and set to defend when we had the ball.

“It’s something we talk about a lot, but they [Carlisle] outran us on transitions and turnovers. They could have won by more.

READ MORE: Paul Simpson's verdict on Carlisle's win over Doncaster

“They scored [their second] early in the second half, then we made a silly error on the right hand side and scored the [third]. We shot ourselves in the foot.

“We all need to be better, myself included, the players as well. A few kept getting on the ball but no-one comes out of it with their head held high.”

Doncaster were level on points with Carlisle at the start of the day but dropped to 12th amid a run of mediocre form.

Asked about his future amid mounting criticism, McSheffrey added: “[The fans] are pretty adamant in terms of the songs they were singing, but we clapped and thanked them for coming and we’re sorry we let them down.

“There’s an expectancy level to be higher up the division. I’m not hiding from anything. But the truth is we’re getting outsized a bit in games, outran, other teams are looking a bit better than us athletically.

“On turnovers especially we look like we can get exploited. We need to be a lot better.

“We just have to keep going and bounce back. You can’t hide. We have to come through tough times.

“It’s been a real bad day, we know we need to improve performance levels and today we felt we put a tam out that could do it. It just wasn’t good enough.”